Illeagal Games in Pubs--Oh Dear

Premier League - Pub landlady ushers in TV football rights revolutionThu, 03 Feb 12:33:00 2011

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EmailPrintA pub landlady from Portsmouth has won a court case that means football fans will be allowed to use cheap foreign TV decoders to watch Premier League matches.


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..The landmark decision by an adviser to Europe's top court is expected to have a huge impact on the way the Premier League sells broadcasting rights.

The opinion by Advocate General Juliane Kokott at the European Court of Justice centres on whether a rights holder such as the Premier League can license its content on a country-by-country basis, allowing it to maximise the value of its rights, as it currently does.

Kokott's opinion concerned two cases, one of them involving landlady Karen Murphy, who owns the 'Red, White and Blue' in Portsmouth.

Murphy acquired a Greek decoder to show Premier League games on her pub TV, on the grounds that the Sky Sports monthly subscription was prohibitively expensive.

She was subsequently sued by a body representing the broadcasting interests of the 20 English Premier League clubs, and appealed to the ECJ after losing her case in an English court and being ordered to pay a fine.

The second case involved the FA Premier League against two suppliers of foreign satellite equipment. The English body had earlier settled with a number of pub landlords who had used the decoders to show football matches.

Though Kokott's ruling is officially non-binding, judges are expected to back the advocate general's line in the majority of cases.

"The exclusivity agreement relating to transmission of football matches is contrary to European Union law," Kokott said in her opinion.

"(The) exclusivity rights in question have the effect of partitioning the internal market into quite separate national markets, something which constitutes a serious impairment of the freedom to provide services."

The Premier League has benefited in recent years from the huge demand for its rights and has taken action against a number of persistent offenders who have shown live games using decoders with viewing cards for foreign broadcasters.

But Kokott said such use did not undermine the economic benefits of the rights holders.

"There is ... no specific right to charge different prices for a work in each member state," she said.

BSkyB's Sky Sports, which owns the right to show most of the matches shown live in Britain and Ireland, makes about £200 million in revenues from pubs and clubs according to analysts at Jefferies Research.

They estimated an adverse ruling could have a £60m to £70m impact.

"However, given Sky's integral role in sports rights, we would expect the impact to be muted with (the Premier League) to offer remedies to limit the impact," Jefferies Research wrote in a client note ahead of the adviser's opinion.


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Marvellous.

Time to get the old 'statellite' dish out the garage, climb up on the roof and point it towards Europe then...

 

I'm sure its having a big affect on our attendance and I know the free choice argument but just feel like its a slow kill of the game.

 

People watch in pubs as ticket prices are deemed too expensive.
The ticket prices are expensive because e the clubs have to pay wages etc.
The wages are high because the clubs have to be attractive to players and the good players cost.
Sky put the massive amount of money into the game so the best players could be signed.

 

I think it's all this cash from TV revenues which has damaged the game in the first place. It's one of the reasons why many teams now have ridiculous amounts of money to throw around and spend on players wages.

I tried to find something on the web to learn more about using a dish to get European EPL games, but I couldn't find anything.

 

Syd. Football will never die.
This ruling however could well kill idiotic transfer fees and wages.

 

Yeah sorry to say , but the amount of empty seats you had on Tuesday was quite bad.

 

I think 36000 is our norm now, not that bad it just looks it in a 49000 seater stadium.

 

Why are the unwashed putting this thread here? Or is their board as empty as their ground they had to put it here to get any form of response?

 

Where's Big Chris when you need him.

 

Lets hope so fingers crossed.

 

Probably something you have never heard of, football fans debating, we aint all morons you moron.

 

Only debating Sunderland fans are any good at is masturbating. Moron.

 

Such sparkling badinage - if only it made sense I'd declare it the wittiest of repostes.

 

The Bundesliga still manages to stay competitive and the ticket prices over there are around £15, they allow flares, terraces and the like too - I've been to watch both Bayern Munich and SC Freiburg and we think we create an atmosphere!!
Also I think a combination of this rule and the new UEFA rule on transfers coming in in June (feel like a broken record mentioning this ruling!) is definitely going to put a stop to the silly money.
That's the only real positives about both our clubs selling our top strikers for ridiculous money as I doubt we'd ever get a similar price in the future.

 

Pubs will now flock to the Euro channels and I don't blame them. The cost is about one tenth that of getting Sky who, I must say, deserve everything they get for being so bloody greedy.

 

The other positive Euro channels had over Sky for many years - NO ANDY GRAY & RICHARD KEYS, wonder if Euro will become less popular if they find themselves work on some dubious Euro channel

 

I have went to the pub on many occasions to watch football matches, so I can't condem others for doing so. I hold a season ticket for Newcastle and also have Sky Sports at home, I would not miss a home game
but sometimes even if an away game is televised I may go to the pub for a bit of atmosphere meet friends etc. I watced an impassioned plea by Niall Quinn asking his clubs supporters to go to games rather than
watch illegal games in pubs, what can you say, there's a man giving his all for his club. If Mike and Dennis came out with similar statements I'd be thinking they'd totally lost the plot.

 

Maybe if clubs didn't charge expensive prices, more fans would go, and therefore would watch game illegally and I'm not just talking about Sunderland.

 

Alfie you weren't the sharpest tool in the shed at school so ill explain for you, This is a Forum open for debate on any football topic, Syd's article was to keep you informed, or do you watch magic roundabout for all your crack